Author
Topic: The Rotisserie Pizza Grill (Read 18167 times)

CB – That was a 4 minute pie. I love the subtle comment about the cheese. (I know, it looks like cheese is all over the place.) Turns out on Tony’s “New Yorker” they put the moz down first, then sauce, then ricotta blobs, and finally sausage and pepperoni. The excess cheese is mostly ricotta -- an addiction problem with my daughter. The moz was homemade moz.

CB – That was a 4 minute pie. I love the subtle comment about the cheese. (I know, it looks like cheese is all over the place.) Turns out on Tony’s “New Yorker” they put the moz down first, then sauce, then ricotta blobs, and finally sausage and pepperoni. The excess cheese is mostly ricotta -- an addiction problem with my daughter. The moz was homemade moz.

Dave

Dave,

Ha! That is funny....especially since I didn't even know there was ricotta on that pie. It was just that I kept looking an looking at that great pizza and couldn't help but think that if only the cheese was a 'lil leaner it would have had that "ghost" look to the cheese....you know, where it sorta mixes in transparently with the sauce. I see that a lot on Craig's masterpieces and it really looks delicious.Please tell your daughter she's mess'in up my pie's man! Looking forward to your next....great work you're doing, thanks.

I made some mods to the RPG by getting a new replacement burner and increasing the gas flow. The heat increase was more dramatic than anticipated. Instead of a 4-5 minute bake with one bottom burner and the IR burner on high, the new bake time is more like 1:30 for HG flour and 2 minutes for double zero. (Of course I could always turn the the temp down, but what's the fun in that?)

In yesterday's test with Bobino, we baked two "double zero" pies and one Kyrol high-gluten pie on my cordierite stone. Below are a few pictures of the results. Note: Don't read the titles on the last two pictures, and if you do, PM your thoughts to Bobino. He use to live in NY, but he abandoned me during the baking.

After Dave tweaked his heat source we decided to try it out with a 100% 00 flour dough. In the past Dave's dough was was either high gluten or high gluten mix. I made the first two doughs (00) using a modification of John Dellavecchia's work flow.

Dave's oven was amazing, from ambient temp to 800 degrees in less than 15 minutes.

The pictures do not do the pies justice. The leoparding was set against a creamy white dough background, not the brownish color as appears in the picture. The crust was light, flavorful, and very tender. Topped with San Marzanos, fresh basil, K salt, evoo, and fresh mozz from Polly-O curd.

The cheese was problematic as I was concerned it might burn before the crust was finished. I purposely used tall clumps of cheese to slow down the burn but it was only partially successful. I wonder if the pie were baked 30 seconds, removed from the oven, cheese clumps added and back into the oven to finish if this would be successful? Any help here would be appreciated.

The last pie was a N.Y. slice style that I have been successful with in my deck oven (650 sub 4 minute) Clearly the intensity of heat in his oven is too great for this to be successful (read: challenge). lol

I would greatly appreciate it if you could link me to any turntable mod sites. Or was this something that you came up with. In particular, I'm really interested in the first design you were running here. I am needing something for an LBE build and don't see how I can do your bottom motor mount design. I'm using the same burner as you.Thanks so much.

How much strain is the rotisserie motor under ? where did you get the replacement IR burner ?

The rotisserie motor is under almost zero load. I posted earlier that I hogged out the bushing a little with a drill so there was adequate clearance to handle the relative diferences in expansion coefficients between the stainless drive shaft and bronze top-hat bushing. That helped a lot. I do take the drive shaft out every 5-10 bakes and wipe it off, but otherwise, it just works. The replacement burner was not IR, it was the underside burner. I got that from the bbqfactory on ebay. The key point here is that increasing the underside burner made a significant difference to the topside head w/o changing the IR burner.

From CB

Quote

link me to any turntable mod sites. Or was this something that you came up with. In particular, I'm really interested in the first design you were running here. I am needing something for an LBE build and don't see how I can do your bottom motor mount design. I'm using the same burner as you.

I don't know of others in the turntable area besides jgame and creation. It's been a while but I think I saw somenone in the LBE thread rotating by hand and then noticed that I have a rotisserie motor that's never been used in my grill.

You don't want my first design - it's much more complicated and problematic, especially in high temperature environments like LBE.

Have you ever noticed the convection fan in modern ovens? They have the motor located outside the hot environment and the bearing outside the heat then just expose the shaft and blade to the heat. I think that's what you want and it's similar to what I'm using. I'm not an LBE expert but I do try to follow their foolishness (and contribute my own whenever possible). I'd locate the burner more toward the back wall instead of the usual center/bottom location. The rotisserie shaft would be biased toward the front wall in keeping with the usual location of the pizza stone. I'd mount the rotisserie motor below the egg and run the SS driveshaft up to the center of the stone. Keep in mind that when the stone is rotating, the surface temperature will be roughly uniform so the flame nolonger has to be centered. Try to keep the bronze Tophat bushing out of the direct flame - but I would start with a drilled out bronze bushing. (Mine sees a lot of heat although it's not sitting at the end of a propane torch.) Put a shield around the bushing if you need to or investigate ceramic bushings. I think they are using ceramics in automotive turbochargers.

Or you could just go the easy/unmotorized way. Drill a small indentation into the center of the pizza stone and secure a bolt under the stone as a pinpoint slightly proud of the surrounding surface making rotation easy. Use a stick or spatchula to rotate the stone. (I've posted on this elsewhere.)

Hope that helps. We're fortunate to have a lot of bright minds in the forum so if someone has improvements to the above ideas, pls share.

If we could get a relatively cheap IR burner and just mount on the top facing down then it would be very easy to make a very efficient oven,the burner would heat the stone directly initially very fast whilst the platter is spinning and then it would heat the top of the pizza when the pizza is in.

I am actually in the process of rebuilding my oven which is very similar to 2stone with rotating platter.I am going to use a gearmotor and chain to spin the platter shaft.

If we could get a relatively cheap IR burner and just mount on the top facing down then it would be very easy to make a very efficient oven,the burner would heat the stone directly initially very fast whilst the platter is spinning and then it would heat the top of the pizza when the pizza is in.

DaveInWesterville – thx for the IR Burner reference. It’s nice and big for a good price. I think there is merit to an overhead IR burner solution but care must be taken not to fry the center of the pie. If the center is always exposed to the IR heat, it will quickly brown while only a portion of the crust is exposed. Now if we had a triangular-shaped IR burner working over the rotisserie, that could be interesting.

CB – I’ve got some pictures scattered around but here are the relevant photos of the RPG in one spot.